ctrl+alt+del

Iam not sure what can be done about the ipod itself but depending on what version of windows you are using you should be able to just go to a restore point and it will reverse the download of the current i-tunes. If you go to your accessories folder under your start menu then go to system restore you should be able to finda previous date that will have all of your info.
As far as the ipod goes the settings need to be set so that you have your ipod as ahrd drive and not to automatically update music. That is how I have mine set up and have had zero problems with lost music. Hope this helps a little bit

Originally Posted by 29inch

I'm a little paniced at the moment.

New computer, just downloaded a fresh copy of iTunes.

Plugged my pre-existing (and full) IPOD mini into the computer.

Somehow it wiped the IPOD clean of music, and it's NOT in iTunes.

I can't find the music anywhere on the computer. Not in "my music", no in the trash bin, etc.

Simple thought

Forgive me if you already did this, but did you do a simple search from the start button? Many times I've found that I thought for sure i knew the location of something I downloaded only to find that I was wrong. If not, aquahaulic posted a few days ago about having lost a ton of pictures, and he found some software online that helped retrieve it. Sorry I can't be of more direct assistance, and I hope you get your music back.

I can't find the music anywhere on the computer. Not in "my music", no in the trash bin, etc.

Not sure what's going on here, but any help is definately welcome.

I've had this happen twice, finally figured out it's Apple's way of keeping you from sharing tunes from Pod to Pod and or from Pod to another computer. I believe the message is something very innocent that does NOT tell you that you're about to dump the entire Pod. One of the many reasons I hate Apple.

Pimpbot has it right. You need to sync the Pod with iTunes on the old computer. Back up the iTunes file first (if the computer is still functional), You will also need to transfer the iTunes file from computer to computer.

You can also get 3rd party software that - in theory, allows a new computer w/ blank iTunes to be sync'd with a loaded Pod. Never tried it.

Hopefully, you still have your old computer. Re-sync to it to get your music back on your iPod. If you're using a Mac, go get Senuti (do a search for it) and download their software. It allows you to load your iPod onto your new version of iTunes. Complete with easy to understand instructions. I just went through this and aside from the hassle, it ain't so bad. You'll have to redo your folders but hopefully you don't have hundreds of them.

People have already made good suggestions about how to get your music back (if you still have it on an old computer...if not, you're f'd like I was when it happened to me)

There was a version of iTunes that was released recently and for some reason, when it installed, a little checkbox that says something to the effect of "automatically sync iTunes to your iPod" that was checked by default. The kicker is that you can only uncheck this box when your iPod is connected (if you're iPod isn't connected, it's greyed out and you can't change it). So, regardless of what you do, as soon as you plug in the iPod, iTunes wipes it clean. I was off working in another application immediately after I connected and didn't realized what had happened until my iPod was empty. I lost nearly 40G of live music I downloaded from Archive.org, classified, ripped to MP3, tagged and organized...hours and hours of work. My computer HD had crashed and I had no way to get the music from my iPod before I realized it was toast.

Hopefully you have copies of the songs you lost on another computer or drive somewhere and can easily recover them. If you don't, I hope you have better luck finding a contact at Apple than I did.

sorry off topic--i still hate ipod this ipod that ipod everywhere-----there are other mp3 players out there. I hope ipod becomes a relic soon.

i just got my kid a jvc--just as nice-almost--as my creative.

now whats really to complain about is the stupid xbox 360. the usb port for the mp3 player is no more than a glorified aux in jack on a pre-amp or receiver. Jerkwads wont let their customers actually transfer a song from an mp3 player to the hard drive--still have to burn a disc to do that--overpriced piece of cra*.

Have rid of I-tunes, it is a useless program anyway. The program you want is called "Ipod agent" and can be freely downloaded if you do a quick search. This program is everything that I-tunes should have been, and is not. System restore programs will not help because the music has been wiped from your Ipod by Itunes on your new pc (mac or other). If you want to transfer your music with the Ipod, use Ipod agent, or use the Ipod as a flash device and transfer the files in WMA or MP3, before Itunes can convert and track them. Jonathan

I've used Drive Rescue a couple times to recover files that I "lost." It might work for you but itâ€™s better than nothing right now.

Since the great data fire of December 2000, I'm religious about redundant backups. One main copy on the daily use computer, daily incremental and weekly full backups on a separate server, extra copy on external 250GB USB drive and once in a while I'll burn copies to DVD, which I mail off to a relative "for external storage".

FWIW, a decent program for playing/extracting music from an Ipod for Windows is outpod. It will allow you to synch other things too.

For Future Reference.

I keep a backup copy of my library on my Ipod. I have the 40 gig model. My wife also has the 40 gig model too. So I enabled disk use on both units and backuped up a copy of the entire library to my disk. This only works for smaller librarys. I have about a 300 cd library. Equal to about 18 gig on my system. I have plenty of space to spare. If you have questions apple has some pretty good how-to videos.